The Brooklyn Museum Libraries and Archives often receive fascinating research questions from both st

The Brooklyn Museum Libraries and Archives often receive fascinating research questions from both staff members and art researchers around the world. In order to answer these questions, we use our online library and archives catalog, Brookmuse, to search for resources that could provide us with the answers we seek. This catalog shows books, periodicals, special collections, auction catalogs, archival material, artist files, electronic journals and e-books that are all a part of our collection and accessible to staff and, by appointment, to the public.  As part of the New York Art Resources Consortium, our catalog is accessible through a powerful new search engine called NYARC Discovery, which makes resources from the Brooklyn Museum Libraries and Archives, the Frick Art Reference Library and the Museum of Modern Art Library available all in one place.On a recent library tour, a staff member inquired about the origin of the title “Brookmuse.” This seemed like a great opportunity for us to spend some time digging in the archives and see what we could find. It turns out that the Brooklyn Museum applied for a cable address with the title “Brookmuse” in 1913. This address allowed the Museum to send and receive telegraphic messages from across the world. Telegraphic technology eliminated the need for time consuming postal exchanges and could be considered a precursor to our modern e-mail system.The name must have stuck, since in 1963 “Brookmuse” also became the title of the first staff bulletin for the Brooklyn Museum. This internal magazine contained information on new exhibitions at the Museum, publications by staff members, and “all matters of importance to the staff as a whole.” There is a copy of the staff bulletin, which had a short run from 1963-1965, available for viewing in our reading room.We now know Brookmuse as a helpful search engine for finding resources in our library and archives. This title has had many uses over the past one hundred years, and I bet it will have even more in the next hundred!Posted by Giana Ricci -- source link

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